Posthuman philosophy and the Big Questions

One of the many interesting turns in yesterday’s A&P discussion came when someone suggested that it’s presumptuous of nonbelievers to assume the ultimate explanation of life and existence must necessarily be scientific. How do we know we’re not  so low on the evolutionary escalator that all our big categories (including “scientific” and “religious”) won’t eventually be swallowed up by forms of intelligence we can’t begin now to fathom? Perhaps our heated debates about god and cosmology will all be left in the dustbin of natural history.

I think that’s an intriguing suggestion. Pride does goeth before a fall, and while we have come a long way from stone knives and bearskins we still need to eat our humble pie. Is anyone besides John Horgan still talking about the “end of science” these days, let alone the end of inquiry? It’s thrilling to think of the human adventure as only the “beginning of infinity.” (That’s Isaac Asimov‘s phrase in End of Eternity, lately exapted by David Deutsch [On Point].) Maybe a wholly different spectrum of light will be shed, when our great- great-whatevers find a way to see through all that opaque Dark Matter. But of course that’s going to take awhile.

The transhumanists think we can speed the process along, through the adept deployment of new life technologies. In his “Prolegomena to Any Future Philosophy” Mark Walker (reported Bill McKibbben in Enough) says we should

create beings who are as far removed from us in intelligence as we are from apes,” and then wait for them to provide the answers… They would, he writes, be godlike. And then they could provide the theory of everything.

In Remaking Eden Lee Silver imagines posthuman philosophers of the remote future finally answering the Big Questions:

• Where did the universe come from?
• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• What is the meaning of conscious existence?

Will those philosophers be scientists or religionists? Will they have a pious bone in their bodies, or a reverential electrode in their neural nets, or…? Will anything to them be sacred?

It’s impossible to say, and for some of us it’s hard to care what they’ll say. We’re the ones asking those questions right now. We have to fashion our answers with the conceptual tools we’ve got, not the ones we’d like to imagine. (Is that the philosophical analogue of the Rumsfeld Doctrine?)

And so it’s entirely predictable that mere humans will continue to choose sides between science and religion, theism and atheism, etc., and will continue to be tone-deaf or just indifferent to the other side. I just hope we’ll all continue to be as agreeably disagreeable as the students in A&P have been, so far. Let’s make those posthumans proud.

Secular believers and the feeling of faith

Begin the Baggini: we begin Julian Baggini’s Atheism today in A&P. His BBC celebration of secularity is a good introduction.

The Secular Society has a nice place, but wait ’til you see Alain de Botton’s Atheist Temple. (Thanks Dean.) Puts the Crystal Cathedral to shame.

Baggini has little use for fideism. After reading Martin Gardner I have to say I’m also unimpressed with the quixotic “believe in spite of anything” school.

And yet. I can’t shake the sense of a “feeling of faith” I don’t know personally, am deeply skeptical about, but still can’t bring myself to dismiss out of hand. JMH:

Some people may be tone-deaf to the idea of evidence, some may be tone-deaf to the feeling that there is a higher power—we must forgive them each their failing. But there is also a tradition by which both sides refuse to engage the interesting questions: believers refuse to consider the reasonableness of doubt, and nonbelievers refuse to consider the feeling of faith.

It’s an odd dynamic, emerging from the juxtaposition of this class with CoPhi. On alternate days I find myself either the most or the least assertive atheist in the room, all because I’m trying to “engage the interesting questions” and “consider the feeling of faith.” I’m always seeking someone’s forgiveness. (Cue Mr. Prine.)

I wish the hard-core “secular believers” in A&P could have seen the looks of blinking incomprehension on some students’ faces when I said yesterday, as matter of factly as I feel it, that I simply do not accept the concept of “hell.” (Well, there have been a few staff meetings… but never mind.)

I find it easier to renounce the concept of hellfire, anywhere and anytime, than to flatly repudiate someone’s heartfelt testimonial of, say, an encounter with angels. That’s inconsistent, I know. Angels make no more sense than demons.  But angels are benign and helpful spirits, and people do need help. Nobody needs to roast, or to espouse a loving god who could be capable of turning up the heat.

Still, and though I typically don’t say so, the angel-feeling is not the “feeling of faith” I feel obliged to respect. I usually just only ridicule it “in my heart.” (Like Jimmy Carter, that’s also where I do my best sinning.)

My greater regard is for the more amorphous, mysterious, mystical experiences  that result in something imprecise but uplifting being somehow registered by the experiencer. Again, people need help. They need uplift. I don’t want to deprive people of the help they need.

But maybe  the greatest help will come when “all of God’s children” are confident enough in human solidarity and humane secularity to look the universe squarely in the eye and not blink at its failure to reflect what JMH calls our humanness. We are the repositories and the expressors of value, not it. Or rather, we are the part of it with values. As Julian Baggini says, we just need to have a little more faith in ourselves.

Atheism is not a faith position because it is belief in nothing beyond which there is evidence and argument for; religious belief is a faith position because it goes beyond what there is evidence or argument for.

Thus Christianity endorsed the principle that it is good to believe what you have no evidence to believe, a rather convenient maxim for a belief system for which there is no good evidence.

It is a simple error to suppose that just because atheist beliefs are also “unproven” or “uncertain” that they too require faith. Faith does not plug the gap between reasons to believe and certain proof.

So here is a first step in moral thinking. Forget any transcendental lawgiver or divine source of morality. Just think about what is needed for a human life to go well and you will soon find that most of what we recognize as morality comes into play.

…being good is a challenge for everyone, atheist or non-atheist.

Renewing the passion for wisdom

Beginning once more in CoPhi with the late Robert Solomon’s rapid overview of the history of philosophy. I’ve been using Passion for Wisdom for a long time, and have yet to find anything of its kind I like better.  Maybe next year? Nigel Warburton’s Little History of Philosophy (sample) might work. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, our plates are full with the first 17 pages of Passion for Wisdom, from Augustine to Brahma to Xenophanes to the Zeitgeist and Zoroaster.

PW preface, 3-18, H Introduction. Fate vs. logos, Early Indian philosophy, Hebrew philosophy, Zoroastrianism, problem of evil/suffering/pain. **RECOMMENDED: JMH ch 2, especially 62-74

The biggest topic here, for my money, is the problem of evil & suffering. Is it bad enough to warrant this bleak statement about the value of life?

“Better to never have been born,” claimed the cheerful figure Silenus, “and next best to die soon.” In a world in which people had so little control, the concept of fate naturally played an important role.

Guess it all depends on who/what/when/where you are. Or why. But fate is no friend of the unborn, is it?

In place of the whims and passions of the gods and the uncertainties of fate, there had to be logos (logos), some reason or underlying logic. Religion had opened the way to the “beyond” for thousands of years, but it was philosophy that would demand order in the beyond.

…what is best known (in the west) about Indian philosophy — its mysticism and that familiar set of exercises known as yoga…

Xenophanes: “if horses and oxen had hands and could draw pictures, their gods would look remarkably like horses and oxen.”

Job & Ecclesiastes…Buddhists on suffering… Berenstain Bears

Aren’t we all “chock-full” of faith?

William James* thought so. And Walter Kaufmann said we heretics can have faith too. Turns out his faith was a lot like mine, and like that of many in my profession: a pluralistic faith in the value of variety, of many voices, of collaboratve learning:

I do not believe in any afterlife any more than the prophets did, but I don’t mind living in a world in which people have different beliefs. Diversity helps to prevent stagnation and smugness; and a teacher should acquaint his students with diversity and prize careful criticism far above agreement. His noblest duty is to lead others to think for themselves. -”Faith of a Heretic” (see also WK’s lectures on existentialism)

But not all faiths are equally meritorious. A rigid, intransigent, unfalsifiable faith too easily becomes a misanthropic dogma. A tentative, grasping, spectatorial faith may be mere wishful sentiment. But faith that motivates works, faith in the future or faith in one’s own abilities or in the capacity for goodness of people who’ve let you down in the past, can be self-actualizing and self-fulfilling if we’re prepared to act on it ourselves and apply what we learn from the consequences. That, anyway, is the faith of a pragmatist, and not just the abstract academic variety of pragmatist but (some of us abstract academics might argue) of pragmatic agents of social change like MLK. Are you skeptical? Good, you should be.

(I love that phrase “chock-full,” it was Jackie Robinson‘s coffee and thus has acquired for me the connotation of fortifying, emboldening plenitude.)

Today in CoPhi we continue our first pass through the Hellenistic Age of ancient Greece, with the Cynics, Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics. They didn’t speak much of faith, but they had a salutary form of it: faith in reality, and faith in the ultimate beneficence of acknowledging it. Their philosophically ”dominant mood” was

a clear-eyed resignation to chaos and uncertainty, and a conviction that reality, even painful reality, is preferable to living under false ideas.

Where so many philosophers in the western tradition have recoiled from uncertainty, they found “emancipation” in the embrace of chaotic reality and the repudiation of “ridiculous, infantilizing misconception.”  They were among the first genuine cosmopolitans, and in JMH’s agreeable metaphor they decided to stop trying so hard to escape the forest of natural existence.

Hang a sign that says HOME on a tree and you’re done; just try to have a good time. Thus the cosmopolitan doubter looks back on earlier generations with bemused sympathy—they were mistaken—and looks upon believing contemporaries with real pity, as creatures scurrying through the forest, idiotically searching for  a way out of the human condition.

Cynic means dog. “Cynics wanted to live virtuously and calmly, the way the animals do.”  Reminds me of my favorite lines from Whitman.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they’re so placid and self contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.

Stoics said “we are here, this is our situation, there is no hidden other situation.” Deal with it.

Epicureans said Take heart! The gods are distracted and uninterested, and anyway they did not make the world, “if they had, it would not be so full of suffering.” And, “we are going to die, but so what? When it is over, it will be over.” And, “the soul is a corporeal thing.” And, “accepting the finality of death makes it possible to enjoy the pleasures of the garden” and to stop yearning for another one to come. “Difficult truth is better than wonderful falsehood.” Sorry, Willy James.

In A&P we’ll look again today at any of Goldstein’s God arguments anyone cares to discuss.  I’m especially interested in the Argument from Pragmatism (#32), which is probably at best an argument for the right to believe (and not for the existence of God). In fact, most of the arguments are best construed in that vein. The largest question we can ask about them in the aggregate, then, is the old Clifford question from Will to Believe: is it ever right, anywhere, any time, to believe anything on insufficient evidence? By what right? (SEP)

D has challenging thoughts* on all this, and awaits my reply. I do too. Never know just what I think about WJ’s WtB, at a given moment, ’til I see what I say that day. I’m pretty sure it’s a crummy argument for God’s existence, but am still unresolved as to its ultimate merits in defending personal belief in things unseen. It’s a big, open universe, maybe there’s room in it for variety here too.

*”Appeals to authority are bad, recognition of authorities’ insight, when evident, is good. Is there a reliable criterion of evidence we can all invoke?”

If by ‘reliable’ you mean steadfast expectations based on past experiences, then empirical science has been proven to be the most reliable criterion for event prediction. I don’t think this has to exclude other means of discovery, but we all rely on empirical science every day whether we like it or not. One would be hard pressed to find a theist willing to be blindfolded and rely on divine guidance to traverse a busy intersection… If we both accept [the foregoing statement about 'authority'] as true and by ‘authorities’ insight’ you mean insight based on scientific theories that are repeatable, falsifiable and backed up empirical data, then, in light of verifiable evidence, ‘authority,’ in this sense, is simply the genesis or author of the theory, which has no bearing on the veracity of the facts…

Sounds right enough. My problem (might it be my salvation?) is that this still sounds right to me too:

I have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith; but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical spirit, they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be lawful philosophically, even though in point of fact they were personally all the time *chock-full of some faith or other themselves.

Faith in the probity of scientific inquiry, for instance, is a faith I happen to share. I am prepared, even, to cross the street on its authority. Seems pretty reliable so far. But it’s not really “faith” in the same sense, is it?

Is there a reconciliation in the offing, between the Jamesian pluralists (am I the only one?) and the hard-core take-no-prisoners atheists? Or at least a spirited and friendly conversation?

Or should we just call the whole thing off, on the authority of whoever left the apocalyptic flyer in my car door last night?

“Jesus Christ is Coming to Take Over! - Your invitation to the take over and escaping death begins by saying yes to Jesus Christ… [Visit our prophecy site on the coming of WW3, the east and west coast tsunamis and mega quake, backed by miracles, signs and wonders at qwakeup.org"]

Kinda makes a mockery of my high-blown defense of Jamesian pluralism, doesn’t it? I think I could turn and live with animals…

The redoubtable quiz that just won’t go away

The last two classes finally get their crack at Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt Quiz today, and an introduction to Doubt. JMH is an atheist of the friendly variety, noting that while belief-centered religion is parasitic on a culture of doubt and that doubt is in fact older than most faiths, “faith can be a wonderful thing.” You’ll not get that concession out of most of the so-called New Atheists, or their 19th century precursors (Marx, Freud, Nietzsche,…).

JMH, a first-rate historian/philosopher/poet (maybe the one and only to wear all those hats with flair, in our day) is a frequent contributor to the Best American Poetry blog. She did a terrific interview with Krista Tippett on the program formerly known as “Speaking of Faith” (which became Being in large part because the host was so impressed by Hecht’s presentation, and came to realize that there’s far more to be said of heaven and earth than is dreamt of by people of faith alone.

JMH discerns seven historically-salient categories of doubt: science, nontheistic religion (eg Buddhism), cosmopolitanism, morally indignant repudiation of the world’s suffering and injustices, “graceful-life philosophies” (eg Epicureanism-”we don’t need answers or stuff”), philosophical skepticism (whether contrived like Descartes’ or sincere like Montaigne’s and Socrates’), and finally “the doubt of the ardent believer” (like Jesus).

Now, about that quiz: There have already been several interesting comments about the exercise, and a few expressions of surprise and exasperation. One stumbling block I’ve noticed is the reluctance most of us have, admirably, to declaring an unequivocal response to questions about which nobody can know the absolute and incorrigibly correct answer. “Not sure” is sane and circumspect, but remember that the quiz is simply asking what you know about your own mind and heart at this very moment of reflection. You’re not required to claim omniscience or certainty about the universe.

Interpreted in that light, I find myself capable of declaring a solid yes or no to most of the questions, and of pretty much skipping the “not sure” category entirely. That is, I know what I think at this moment about these matters. I don’t know that I’m right. Neither do you, right?

People often demur, when asked if they consider themselves atheists, on the grounds that it sounds too confident and cocky to say they don’t believe in a transcendent/supernatural creator God… even if they really don’t. But why should it seem any more cocky to say “I don’t believe X” than to say “I do,” when it’s already been conceded all around  that nobody-but-nobody knows for sure? If we’re really flinging open the closet doors and inviting everyone into the fresh air and honest sunshine of truthfulness, it should not. No double-standards need apply.

So maybe it’s easier to take the quiz if you silently mouthe the qualifier “but I could be mistaken” after each  response? As an instinctive fallibilist (as opposed to either fideist or dogmatist) I always thought that went without saying, but say it if it helps.

Here’s a small unscientific sampling of what others have said about the quiz so far:

• We collectively concluded that when it comes to religion, there will always be a range of opinions and beliefs regarding religion, and that one quiz could not necessarily determine where you stand with your religion.
• The Doubt quiz told me that I’m either an agnostic or some hybrid atheist thing…I’m pretty sure I can decide for myself. We all agreed that the wording was tricky and that the quiz does not accurately determine what or how one doubts in entirety.
• I heard a lot of talk about the quiz in class today and some different perspectives, some agreeing with and some disagreeing with the results of the quiz. For me, the quiz was simple. I’m a Christian, which led all of my answers to be a solid “yes.” Quite appropriately, the quiz labeled me “a Believer.”
• The Doubt quiz says I’m agnostic. From what I’ve heard about it agnostics think that the knowledge of God is unobtainable and so we shouldn’t bother trying to figure it out. I don’t think any knowledge is unobtainable, we just haven’t found it yet, so I wouldn’t call myself an agnostic. I also wouldn’t call myself an atheist, though I used to be one. I don’t believe in any organized religion but I also don’t believe that reality just happened. Everything the way it is, especially as it is related to us, just seems too perfect to be totally random.
• I also answered “No” to all the questions on the quiz. A few of them were very open to interpretation, like #10. Which reality are we talking about? The reality of how I feel about something, or the reality of the object that I have feelings about? And #13 was so loaded with junk that I answered “No” just on principle
• 1. Do you believe that a particular religious tradition holds accurate knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of human life? No. So far, none of the gods (way over 10,000 and counting) have ever demonstrated any credible evidence for their existence 
outside of human personal conviction or faith, both of which are plagued by inconsistency and incoherence. That fact, compounded by each and every religion’s exclusive, incompatible claims about the divine, makes accepting Pascal’s Wager the beginning of a more extensive problem—not the solution. (See all of D’s responses here… and see William James’s responses to his quiz, way back in the day, here.

Donald Hall’s window

Donald Hall is one of my favorite poets, a former poet laureate, a Red Sox fan (and author of “The Baseball Players” and “Baseball and the Meaning of Life“) , and a feature subject in the current New Yorker (which I’ve finally caught up with). He’s now old and alone (his wife and fellow poet Jane Kenyon left us several years ago) and infirm, no longer writing poetry but still loving life. The view from his window is a reminder to us all that we’re damned lucky to be here, and should not waste a breath on despair.

Jennifer Hecht has also read Hall’s essay and commented on it.

Did you read the piece by Donald Hall in the New Yorker this week? It is an essay on looking out the window, old, and between pages on birds and snow he reports on his life with a phrase for each decade, his thirties bad, his forties forgotten because he was drunk, fifties a good total change of life. Each brings so many questions none of which he there answers. We’re in the middle of so many adventures. Life, I’ve long said, is a decent book with a terrible pacing problem.

The pacing gets too slow in January, she’s saying. April is not the cruelest month. How could a St. Louisan like T.S. Eliot say such a ridiculous thing? Oh, yeah – he’s one of the two from my hometown- the other was a student last Fall- I’ve encountered who did not care about the Cards. He was a convert to Catholicism and not to the Church of Baseball, aka “religion without the mischief.”

I think Mr. Hall shares George Santayana’s perspective on the seasons, as expressed in The Life of Reason: we should enjoy each in turn, and not allow ourselves to be hopelessly in love only with the Spring.

But I still can’t wait for April. Neither can Donald Hall.

Tea Partiers and bong partiers

The New Yorker is the greatest magazine in the world.

And, the most prolific. Every issue arrives before I’ve finished with its predecessor. The January 23 number is here but I’m just getting to January 16, where I find in Talk of the Town the best short explanation of Ron Paul’s popularity I’ve yet seen:

Paul, whose batty-grandpa personality and oddball mélange of pacifism, anarcho-libertarian radicalism, and crackpot economics attracts an equally eccentric congeries of Tea Partiers and bong partiers… Hendrik Hertzberg

That’s it exactly, in a nutshell.

Walk softly & carry a big philosophy club

This sign popped up all over campus yesterday, including here in front of my building.

The philosophy club is already laying plans to respond with

Philosophy Study

& Free Food

for thought

They usually meet on Thursdays at 5 in JUB 304, for those in the neighborhood. Gotta fight fire with fire. Or better yet, with intelligence and smart conversation. Maybe a film now and then. (Did you guys ever finish screening Life of Brian, Ryan?)

So in CoPhi today we’ll be looking at JMH‘s Olympian Gods, pre-Socratics, Democritus, Socrates & Plato, and Aristotle.

And later in A&P, it’s the first of two classes devoted to Cass Seltzer’s (Rebecca Goldstein’s) 36 Arguments, split five ways:

Arguments 1-6 , Cosmological Argument through Argument from the Beauty of Physical Laws; 7-12, Argument from Cosmic Coincidences through Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness;  13-18, Argument from the Improbable Self through Argument from Free Will; 19-29, Argument from Personal Purpose through Argument from Human Knowledge of Infinity;  30-36, Argument from Mathematical Reality through Argument from the Abundance of Arguments.

Where to begin? The gods, of course. Whatever happened to them, anyway?

JMH points out how human they were, Zeus and Hera and the gang. The pantheon was close at hand, just up the hill.

They were imminent in human life and in the environment: they brought meaningful dreams to sleepers and threw thunderbolts when they were angry. They even lived nearby, on Mount Olympus. They also gave an external cause for human inconsistency or illogic…

Cupid hurled his arrows and your fate was sealed. Gods and daemons pulled our predecessors’ strings and they felt relieved of responsibility for their world. The gods may have been flighty and injudicious and unpredictable but at least they imposed a kind of chaotic order on our human chaos, “invisible bvut made apparent by the authority of the poets.” Until a few pre-Socratic philosophers and Socrates himself came along to question authority of every kind, their rule stood unchallenged by mortal men. But “under the gaze of philosophy”…

==

Richard Dawkins has famously observed that

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,  homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

“Outrageous,” say some. I say he’s too kind, and Seltzer/Goldstein say

The God of the Old Testament commanded people to keep slaves, slay their enemies, execute blasphemers and homosexuals, and commit many other heinous acts. Of course, our interpretation of which aspects of Biblical morality to take seriously has grown more sophisticated over time, and we read the Bible selectively and often metaphorically. But that is just the point: we must be consulting some standards of morality that do not come from God in order to judge which aspects of God’s word to take literally and which aspects to ignore. (Argument #16, “The Argument from Moral Truth”)

And that’s why we philosophers always go back to Plato’s Euthyphro, again and again, when we begin talking to students about philosophy, ethics and morality, and religion. (full text… Last Days of Socrates)

The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy [or good] is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

“Reference to God does not help in the least to ground the objective truth of morality.”

Or you could take it on the authority of two guys called Jesus and Mo.

Another opening day

It’s deja vu, all over again: a quirk in the calendar has me meeting two classes for the first time today, after meeting the others twice already. CoPhi will be slightly out of sync, but you really can’t have too many fresh starts in life. Once again, let’s play ball!

A “non-traditional” student stopped by the office yesterday after class. He’s a freshman, like his daughter, and is excitedly waking at last to student life and the quest for wisdom. He’s questioning a lifetime of uncritical convention, in the workplace and in church. Hell hath no fury like a former fundamentalist who’s begun to think.

I usually dispute Plato’s claim that no one is really qualified to philosophize before life’s mid-point, but we all have to do what we can when we can. The enthusiasm for fresh starts is infectious, and especially appealing when caught from someone who’s been around the block. No one better appreciates the value of asking Why? No one gives better voice to the Jamesian insight that our habitual acts accumulate day by day and had best not be neglected.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct…

I’m catching lots of enthusiasm in the A&P class too, where we also have more than a few non-trads. I think the presence of experienced students in the mix, alongside the next generation, may be what I like most about teaching at a large state school. When there are more opening days behind than ahead of you, it’s good to be reminded that experience is worth a lot. And curious, inquisitive experience is priceless.  Welcome back!

Doubt Quiz

Back to work, after the long weekend.

We’ll continue getting to know one another in CoPhi and A&P by perusing our posted introductions.

Then, we’ll talk about Jennifer Hecht’s “Scale of Doubt” Quiz.

Finally, we’ll divy ourselves into smaller discussion groups to begin trying to settle the universe’s hash (as William James once put it) more intimately. We’ll fail at “settling,” of course, as philosophers always have; but I’m sure we’ll succeed at hashing out some fun.

Here’s the quiz, from the Intro to Hecht’s (hereafter referred to simply as “JMH”) wonderful Doubt: A History. Some of the questions are a bit vague, even annoying, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Choose Yes, No, or Not Sure before peeking below the double lines to see one student’s responses* (I’ll preserve his semi-anonymity here by calling him “D”)  and Hecht’s proposed interpretation** of the results. We’ll discuss others in class and (if anyone wishes) online. As for my own quiz results, I’ll just say I’m pretty “hard-core,” but with a strong tinge of natural piety too. More like John Dewey than William James. [James & Dewey on natural piety]

The Scale of Doubt Quiz

1. Do you believe that a particular religious tradition holds accurate knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of human life?

2. Do you believe that some thinking being consciously make the universe?

3. Is there an identifiable force coursing through the universe, holding it together, or uniting all life-forms?

4. Could prayer be in any way effective, that is, do you believe that such a being or force (as posited above) could ever be responsive to your thoughts or words?

5. Do you believe this being or force can think or speak?

6. Do you believe this being has a memory or can make plans?

7. Does this force sometimes take a human form?

8. Do you believe that the thinking part or animating force of a human being continues to exist after the body has died?

9. Do you believe that any part of a human being survives after death, elsewhere or here on earth?

10. Do you believe that feelings about things should be admitted as evidence in establishing reality?

11. Do you believe that love and inner feelings or of morality suggest that there is a world beyond that of biology, social patterns, and accident—a realm of higher meaning?

12. Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?

13. If someone were to say, “The universe is nothing but an accidental pile of stuff, jostling around with no rhyme or reason, and all life on earth but a tiny, utterly inconsequential speck of nothing, in a corner of space, existing in the blink of an eye never to judged, noticed, or remembered,” would you say, “No that’s going a bit far, that’s a bit wrongheaded?”

==

**“If you answered No to all these questions, you’re a hard-core atheist and of a certain variety: a rationalist materialist. If you said No to the first seven, but then had a few Yes answers, you’re still an atheist, but you may have what I will call a pious relationship to the universe. If your answers to the first seven questions contained at least two Not Sure answers, you’re an agnostic, though not of the materialist variety. If you answered Yes to nine or more, you are a believer…”

*One student’s responses-

1. Do you believe that a particular religious tradition holds accurate knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of human life?

No. So far, none of the gods (way over 10,000 and counting) have ever demonstrated any credible evidence for their existence
outside of human personal conviction or faith, both of which are plagued by inconsistency and incoherence. That fact, compounded by each and every religion’s exclusive, incompatible claims about the divine, makes accepting Pascal’s Wager the beginning of a more extensive problem—not the solution.

2. Do you believe that some thinking being consciously made the universe?

No. There’s no evidence for this claim either. Smacks of presuppositional question-begging.

3. Is there an identifiable force coursing through the universe, holding it together, or uniting all life-forms?

No. Positing a god as a sustaining force in the universe has no more of a provisional basis than Santa, fairies, the spaghetti monster, or the grand electric chicken (GEC). It only answers a mystery with a mystery and doesn’t get us anywhere.

4. Could prayer be in any way effective, that is, do you believe that such a being or force (as posited above) could ever be responsive to your thoughts or words?

No, and I still go by the old adage: nothing fails like prayer. For a rather crude but (I think) conclusive study, check out the recent experiment regarding the National Day of Prayer.

5. Do you believe this being or force can think or speak?

No.
6. Do you believe this being has a memory or can make plans?

No.

7. Does this force sometimes take a human form?

No.

8. Do you believe that the thinking part or animating force of a human being continues to exist after the body has died?

No.

9. Do you believe that any part of a human being survives death, elsewhere or here on earth?

No, and I hope not. As for the Christian understanding of life after death, even playing guitar gets old after several hours so I couldn’t imagine playing a harp for eternity and having to constantly kiss the butt of some angry, jealous and insecure deity the entire duration. That very thought seems like “hell” to me.

10. Do you believe that feelings about things should be admitted as evidence in establishing reality?

No. Science has been the most effective way of furthering our understanding of the universe—as Lawrence Krauss puts it: “The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.” And in the words of Jacob Bronowski, “The sanction of experienced fact as a face of truth is a profound subject, and the mainspring which has moved our civilization since the Renaissance.” Feelings can be useful in establishing “ought,” but “is” is a question of science and I believe we have yet to close that gap.

11. Do you believe that love and inner feelings of morality suggest that there is a world beyond that of biology, social patterns, and accident — i.e., a realm of higher meaning?

No, not in the sense that there is something “out there” or supernatural beyond our own internal consciousness, feelings, personal experiences, and emotions. So far, evidence weights that the “world beyond” is literally in our heads. Also, one can find plenty of meaning right here on mother earth.

12. Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?

No. So far science and reason has given us the best explanation of the world as it exists and is continually progressing. Religion’s view of reality has been proven wrong time and time again. Periodically, scientific claims get proven wrong or the claims simply improved because of the mechanism within science (the scientific method), which is a catalyst for further improvement understanding. Religion, personal revelation, and wishful thinking are devoid of such self-correcting mechanisms.

I also don’t think anything supernatural (e.g., gods, ghosts, goblins, etc.) will be discovered outside of science, which is the current benchmark for human understanding about reality. If we were to discover something “supernatural,” it would simply not be supernatural. We could measure it, talk to it, test it, try to escape its wrath, plead with it or maybe even buy it a beer, but it wouldn’t be supernatural. It will be simply natural. Beyond our current understanding doesn’t necessarily mean supernatural—it just means we haven’t gotten there yet.

13. If someone were to say “The universe is nothing but an accidental pile of stuff, jostling around with no rhyme nor reason, and all life on earth is but a tiny, utterly inconsequential speck of nothing, in a corner of space, existing in the blink of an eye never to be judged, noticed, or remembered,” would you say, “Now that’s going a bit far, that’s a bit wrongheaded?”

No.

Moreover, on the quiz I scored as hard-core atheist of the rationalist-materialist variety. Several of these answers could have easily (for me, being obvious) fallen within the “not sure” category. But in the context of Hecht’s “Doubt”—the existence of gods—I went with a resounding “no” to these answers due to my abhorrence and boredom with the god-of-the-gaps explanation for the unknowable. I don’t champion any of these answers with absolute certainty, and all answers were based on reason, evidence, and probability. I always remain open to examining further evidence and subjecting radical hypotheses to skeptical inquiry.

I reserve the right to be wrong about some of these questions and anxiously look forward to examining the evidence proving otherwise.